How Castithans Keep Warm
by MissMelysse
Summary: Pick one word. Repeat it over and over. Make it yours. - Alak holds his son and tries to stay warm. One shot. Alak/Christie implied but takes place in season three, post premiere.


**Disclaimer:** _SyFy/Trion/Whomever owns Defiance. I'm just playing in their sandbox._ _Mild spoilers for season three, I suppose._

* * *

 **How Castithans Keep Warm**

Winter in Defiance has never been a pleasant experience, Alak reflects, cuddling his son closer, shivering himself. Castithan blood isn't meant for ice and snow and cold. Luke has his mother's skin, though, warm and not-pink. Brown. Lighter than his mother's, but definitely brown.

"I'm not _pink!_ " Christie's protest echoes in his brain, in his heart. Can the baby hear the echo?

Luke stares up at Alak, his father's eyes in his mother's face. Maybe he'll be better suited for this world than his father is?

As a child, Alak found comfort in the heat of his mother's embrace, energy in the passion of his father's ambition, warmth in the liquid cradle of the family bath.

But childhood is long since gone, and this winter is colder than any he remembers, and now he's a single father, and the baby needs to be kept warm.

He asked Christie once, how she managed to fight through the pain of birth, the sting of loss, the apparent death of hope.

"I picked one word," she said. "I said it over and over, and made it mine."

He didn't ask her what word. He didn't need to. He knows it was his name, until Luke was born, and then it was both their names, AlakLuke AlakLuke. AlakLuke. Two names made into one word. A mantra repeated over and over. He remembers her chanting it under her breath. He just never knew why.

 _Pick one word_ , he thinks. _Pick one word._

But what word?

He considers the words that resonate with him now. The words he grew up with.

 _Rutsayo._ Flower. He and Christie stood in a meadow of wildflowers and exchanged promises that weren't yet vows. How young they'd been, how happy. How innocent. How _stupid._

 _Vakitso_. Survivor. So many nights he wishes they had killed him, too. He's not strong. He's not courageous. He doesn't do great deeds. He's just a geeky kid who loves music. Well, maybe not so much a kid anymore, but even so, he's an accidental survivor, and the guilt wracks him, wrecks him, especially at night.

 _Eshkizhulo_. Strength. Alak has always known that his mother – Stahma (he thinks of her only as Stahma, now) has always been the keeper of strength in their family. His father – Datak – is all ferocity and bluster, but his mother has a core of something harder than steel and more powerful than gulanite. Christie had a similar core, but one that was forged on Earth, rather than in the stars.

 _Swogo_. Star. Luke, Irisa had told him, liked to stare up the stars. Did the baby see something that was beyond Alak's comprehension, or did he just like the pretty lights in the sky? Alak didn't know, couldn't know, but he was grateful to the Irathient girl who could have been a friend, if they'd met sooner, or if they weren't who they were. Maybe they could forge a friendship now. They were of a similar age, born _of_ the stars, but _to_ the Earth.

"Thank you for saving my son," he'd told her.

Those words were everything.

Those words were nothing.

 _Daimya_. Brave. Alak understands now that Christie had always been brave. Maybe it was her bravery, as much as her long black hair and the curves of her body that attracted him. She had stood up to her parents, his parents, _him._ She had fought for Defiance when the call was given. She had given her life to his mother to keep their son alive. Now Alak had to try and retain some of her bravery for his own use.

 _Puráyo._ Spring. The season of blooming and new growth. Alak tastes the word, repeating it. _Puráyo. Puráyo. Puráyo, puráyo, puráyo._ Spring. The return of warmth. The time of new life and new hopes.

 _Pick one word, and repeat it over and over._

 _Make it yours._

Alak has picked his word, found his mantra.

 _Puráyo._

He cuddles his son close to his body. He curls around the swaddled baby on the bed where he and Christie made him.

 _Puráyo._

He is already warmer.

* * *

 **Notes:** I used to run an e-zine, but even after interviewing Grant Bowler, before _Defiance_ had even aired, I wasn't really into it until I went to the Defiance panel at Dallas Comic-Con in February, 2014. I'm not a gamer (my husband is), and I'm not an obsessive fan, but I love the language, and the metaphor for the immigrant/pioneer experience. I also think Christie was underrated, so sue me. Vocabulary words come from the Learn Votan wiki. Story loosely inspired by a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye.


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